Letter to the Editor: Pate using County error to push Election Integrity Act

Friday

Feb 24, 2017 at 12:06 PMMar 1, 2017 at 3:22 PM

Julie Stewart

Dear Editor,

Secretary of State Paul Pate appears to want to use miscounted votes to push his Election Integrity Act. This bill focuses on voter fraud instead of the incompetency of elected officials.

When the omitted absentee ballots amount to about 13 percent of the votes cast, who is accountable for the unofficial results? Whose words are we to believe since they have not publicly released the count of the omitted absentee ballots?

Dallas County already has the electronic equipment necessary to scan driver’s licenses for voter identification. This evidently did not prevent the Republican supervisors from certifying the election results when there was a large discrepancy between the voter participation totals and the totals in the election results. An official recount cannot be made.

Someone in Pate’s office found the discrepancy in the General Election results in Dallas County of 5,842 absentee ballots that went unreported. The error was not even caught during the state’s audit process. However, Pate is more concerned about his agenda of voter fraud instead of holding county elected officials accountable for the actual votes cast.